Holy Half Way

Zdrastvuitye!

Holy cow!!! Half of my MTC time is almost over!!!! Saturday is my districts halfway point and we are going to have a major vecherinka (party)! I still have so much to learn before I go!!! At this point I would be so grateful to have 12 weeks instead of 9 in the MTC. I've learned so much thus far, but at the same time I'm definitely not ready to head out into the real world yet. I know I'll be ready at the end of my 9 weeks, but there's still so much to learn!!! Ahhhhh!!!!!! I'm so excited! Time is just flying by.

This week Sister McKell and I got to move rooms. Sister Fackrell and Sister Leavitt left for Russia last week and our Branch President suggested that we move in with some Russian sisters that lived right across the hall. We love these sisters to death, so of course we agreed. Their names are Sister Kim and Sister Jessop and they are amazing! They leave in like 2 or 3 weeks so we will most likely have the room to ourselves after they go on to Russia. Love them! Today we are getting about 35 new Russian missionaries. We will have 14 Elders and 8 Sisters in our district and the other Russian district will get 12 or 13 missionaries. I am so excited to meet them! They're going to be like our little babies!

Kind of a weird thing happened this week, but it was really cool! Sister McKell and I were sitting outside during personal study time and this guy walked up to me who looked very very vaguely familiar. He said: "Hey! You don't know who I am, but I know you. (Not the best way to start a conversation I might add. Anyways...) I served a mission with your brother in Boise. We were in Jerome together!" I remember seeing him in a picture or something... or maybe the Spirit helped me recognize him... I don't know. I think Trevor has talked about him before, but this Brother's name was Brother Jones. We talked a lot about Trevor and about how much he enjoyed serving with him. It made me all teary-eyed talking about my big Bro. It was so cool to talk about Trevor and how far he's come. Brother Jones teaches at the MTC and that's why I was able to come across him. Crazy cool experience for sure!!!! (I am taking this out for Trevor because I don't know if he knows this, but Brother Jones told me that he wants to surprise Trevor at his homecoming. I don't know if it'll end up being a surprise since he needs to know the details from Trevor, but I thought I'd let you know for fun.)

Fun fact! So I have another story to add to the "What Elders Do Before Quiet Time" chapter. I have no idea why, but one of the Elder's moms decided that it would be a swell idea to send her son a plethora of Nerf guns. This particular Elder decided that it would be fun to stick sewing needles in the Nerf darts and shoot them at people. They've been doing this for about a week now, so initially it wasn't that big of a deal. The Elders got poked a lot and would have contests to see who could handle getting shot in the same spot more than once with a needle. All was well until two nights ago. The Nerf gun Elder tried to shoot one of the Elders in my district with a needle dart, but he deflected it with his towel, in the process pushing the needle out of the dart and onto the floor. The Elder from my district ended up stepping on it and the entire thing shoved up into his foot. They had to run over to the ER and get it X-rayed. Turns out it broke into three pieces inside his foot and he had to get it surgically removed yesterday because one of the pieces was too far in. Silly Elders.

Spiritual experience! Yesterday my class did a teaching exercise where we were supposed to identify our investigator's concern and then the investigator would choose a random verse from the Book of Mormon at any time during the lesson. The verse had to be completely random, not premeditated or anything, and we had to resolve their concern using that verse. When I played the role of the investigator, the Elders who taught me had to resolve my concern about why we need to do so much in the church. The scripture that I randomly picked had something to do with a desolate land that was basically a skeleton graveyard. Their answer was definitely a stretch but they made it work. They said something along the lines of: "Through trials, tribulations, and turning to the Lord, we prove our faith. The people who were intending on inhabiting this desolate land had to work to build a foundation. Our duties in the church build the foundation of our testimony and faith." Totally paraphrased that... but you get the idea. The Spirit told them how to make it work, and they did.

When my companion for the exercise, Elder Peterson, and I taught our investigator, we jumped to conclusions too quickly in regards to his concern and ended up missing the mark by a lot. We thought he was having issues finding joy in his life since he didn't love his job and he didn't know what he wanted in life. Totally wrong by the way. The scripture that he randomly picked was, of course, in a war section. It talked a lot about how the men joined together for a common purpose, so I instantly related that to church attendance. I have no idea why that idea came to my mind and I have no idea how we made that work, but somehow we managed to pull a lesson together. We expressed how he could find joy in his life if he went to church. Let me just mention that he was smiling/trying not to laugh during the entire lesson. After we closed our remarks, he said something totally unexpected about our lesson that caught Elder Peterson and me by surprise. He told us that our assumption couldn't have been more wrong regarding his concern. The problem that he had initially thought of that he never got to say had to do with why there is only one true church on the earth. He said that we did a subpar job at addressing the concern that we came up with, but we unintentionally answered his unspoken concern to the tee. He was smiling and laughing during the lesson because he was amazed that we were able to answer his question without even realizing it. We had no idea what we were saying during most of the lesson, but since we were being guided by the Spirit, it was exactly what he needed to hear. The Spirit will teach through you as long as you don't push Him away with pride.

This week has just been so great and spiritual. I cannot even express how much I've learned and grown spiritually in this past month. Remember that the Spirit is always with you as long as you invite Him. That's something I've learned the most at the MTC. The Spirit is always with you, but if you want to continuously feel and enjoy the blessings of the Spirit, you have to ask and not let pride get in the way. Keep doing good things for others and remember who you are!

Da Svidanya!

Love,

Cectpa Megan Wagstaff